


First Name Basis

by squidmemesinc



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, As if he had the grades or the motivation, Frottage, Kageyama studying abroad, M/M, Smoking, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2680055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidmemesinc/pseuds/squidmemesinc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't really know what you're doing at this party in this country you know hardly anything about. People are drinking, and that's not really your thing, so you're hiding in the front yard and making good friends with their tree swing. Also this weird short guy with orange hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Name Basis

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy. I feel like there is really no need to take Japanese characters and bring them to America but I guess this is just self-indulgent because I wanted them to get drunk. There is also no reason to have Kageyama smoking at all other than I like the aesthetic of smoking. Disclaimer: smoking and drinking are bad for you. Do not. Or if you do, do responsibly.
> 
> I am ashamed of having so many "OCs" but I also do not care about any of them at all. It was kind of fun coming up with a bunch of generic American college student names, though. 
> 
> In case it's not super clear, the italicized dialogue is in Japanese.

You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t been thinking about this spot since you first walked past it an hour ago. As your roommate dragged you inside, you had turned your head to gaze wistfully back at it. But, honestly, you probably knew you’d end up here at some point, anyway. Parties tend to make you nervous, since you’re so bad at interacting with people. You either offend them or scare them or don’t talk to them at all.

The swing is simple—just a board suspended by two ropes, tied to the branch of the tree up above. To you, it doesn’t look very safe, but you know from hearing Marcus tell someone else that the family who owns this house put it up for their kid before they started renting it out to college students. He said people used it all the time. You still had a little bit of a doubt that it would support your weight, but the tree looked sturdy, and you had scrutinized the ropes for weak points and found none. It didn’t break when you sat on it, and it didn’t break when you swayed a little from side to side, so that was good enough for you. You never planned to full out swing on it.

It’s not as if you don’t want to go talk to the people at this party, but after spending all day straining to understand what was being said in your classes, you kind of just wanted to relax, maybe watch a movie. But James pointed out that you do that almost every night, and that getting out would be good for you. You wanted to tell him that studying abroad in a country where they don’t speak your native language is hard, but you bit your tongue, because James is one of the few people who doesn’t think you’re weird and you’re working really hard on not pissing that small group of people off so they don’t change their minds.

Anyway, you’re not watching a movie, and you’re not being the social butterfly James had probably envisioned, but sitting outside on this swing and smoking is the next best thing, you suppose. The nicotine is calming you down, or maybe it’s the simple act of having something easy to do to focus on, and it’s pleasantly cool out here, whereas it was warm and stuffy inside.

You try to remember the names of all the people you were introduced to in the hour you suffered along inside, trying to be a good sport. The girl with the white dress had been…maybe Nicole? And the guy in the red plaid had been Do…something. There were so many others in such a short period of time, and you really don’t have the hang of American names yet. You’d do better if you could have written them down. Seeing them makes them easier to repeat.

You sigh and tap some of your ash off onto the ground below you, which is mostly dirt, but you still watch carefully to make sure the sparks don’t land on the sparse grass. Meeting new people has historically been hard for you, and here it’s even harder because you’re a foreigner and for some reason that makes you a hot topic. People want to ask you all sorts of questions about what it’s like to live in Japan, and it’s not that you mind answering them, but then as soon as you’re passed on to the next group and the process starts all over again, and…well, you get a little tired of it. Not to mention, Americans are so forward, and it’s a little overwhelming. You think you were hit on at least three times during the short time you were inside, although you are pretty sure it’s just because they count you as exotic, or maybe because the girls were already a little drunk.

You’re fine with people getting drunk, but you hope that James isn’t getting so drunk that he forgets about you. You’re don’t really want to walk back by yourself, in case some catastrophe happens (like being stopped by a police officer) and you’re forced to be fluent in English, which is something you can’t quite manage yet. Being without your translator would be difficult. Maybe you should go back in and check on him, suffer through all the attention you’ll get.

But first you want to finish your cigarette.

The front door behind you bangs open, signaling an interruption to your solitude. You freeze. It’s dark outside, and you have black hair and are wearing dark clothes, so it’s possible they won’t see you. Hopefully. You hear footsteps, humming, and the person is apparently approaching you. Shit.

“Aw, man, someone’s out here? Shoot,” the person says.

You turn sideways, pivoting the swing a little by anchoring your foot. “Is that a problem?” you ask. Afterwards, you realize it probably sounded a little threatening. That’s just naturally how your voice sounds, and you have to remember to tune it when you meet new people.

The kid scratches his bright orange hair and grins sheepishly. “Nah, I was just gonna take a piss out here since the bathroom is full, but I can wait.” He also sounds a little drunk. “Hey, who’re you, by the way? I don’t think I’ve met you before. I thought I knew everyone here.”

You roll your cigarette between your fingers. “Kage—Tobio Kageyama,” you say. You have to correct yourself, remembering people here introduce themselves by their first names first.

The kid suddenly looks really excited. “Whoa, are you Japanese? I’m Japanese!”

“You are?” You didn’t hear an accent from him at all.

“ _Yeah, I’m Hinata Shouyou. Nice to meet you! Do you want me to call you Kageyama or Tobio?_ ” He says it all in perfect Japanese. Accent included. You’re incredibly jealous of his apparent ability to switch it on and off.

“ _Tobio’s fine,_ ” you say back in Japanese, a little numbly. Like most Japanese, you used to prefer Kageyama, but no one here wants to call you that. But you don’t even really care about that right now. Your heart is fluttering a little at the chance to speak in a language you’re comfortable with for the first time in a month. There are other people from your school, but they’re mostly upperclassmen, and they’re all really good at English, so that’s what they use.

“ _You can call me Shouyou then!_ ” He plops down on the grass in front of the swing. “ _How are you liking the party?_ ”

“ _It’s fine,_ ” you answer, taking another drag of your cigarette. After you do, you hold in your smoke for a second before deciding it would be better to exhale it after all. Somehow, you feel a little embarrassed to be smoking around him, since you don’t do it normally, just in very specific situations. He doesn’t look like he minds, though.

“ _It can be kind of overwhelming. I guess I’m used to it since I’ve been here for six years. My dad had to move for work, so we came in the middle of high school, although I guess in Japan it would have been the beginning. When did you get here?_ ”

“ _The start of the semester._ ”

He nods. “ _What brand are those? They smell like my dad’s._ ” He doesn’t seem to have a very long attention span.

You tug the carton out of your jacket pocket and pass it to him, telling him, “ _Seven Stars. They’re menthols._ ” The regular ones make you cough. It’s not like you’re a big smoker anyway. You only started in high school because an upperclassmen on your volleyball team told you it was a good way to relieve stress sometimes, and you found it kind of worked for you.

“ _Can I try?_ ”

You consider him. He may be from Japan, but he acts American. Still, you’re excited to get to talk someone who you can at least understand on a linguistic level, so you pass it over to him.

He takes it and sucks in, passing it back to you before he exhales the smoke. “ _Doesn’t taste like much, but I’m already kind of drunk. Speaking of which, you seem unfortunately sober._ ”

You shrug.

“ _Do you not drink?_ ”

“ _I don’t really like the taste of alcohol._ ” James and his friends were drinking vodka straight from the bottle a couple of weeks ago, and you didn’t think that was weird because of the way they were doing it, so you tried it and nearly puked.

He laughs. “ _That’s not why you drink it. I bet I could make you something you’d like, though, if you’re interested._ ”

You rock the swing from side to side a little, thinking, and take the last hit of your cigarette. This is the first person you’ve met tonight whose company you might be disappointed to lose. “ _Alright,_ ” you say, smoke mixing with the word and quickly dissipating into the crisp air around you.

“ _Alright!_ ” he repeats, with significantly more enthusiasm. You get up and grind out the butt on the sidewalk before following him inside.

XXX

Somehow, everyone inside seems more drunk and more excited than before. They all seem to know Shouyou, and they direct their questions to where you guys were to him. They’re all assuming you’ve known each other longer than 10 minutes, and he just rolls with it, and you don’t say anything.

He leads you into the kitchen, where various bottles of half-consumed alcohol are strewn around the counter, along with stacks of Solo cups (along with a few unstacked, unclaimed strays). He pulls a cup off the stack and turns to you. “ _Okay, how messed up do you want to get?_ ” he asks.

You feel your face go a little red. “ _I want to be able to talk to people._ ” It’s loud in here and people keep bumping into you, and you’re already missing your swing.

Shouyou nods, grinning, and tosses the cup back and forth between his hands, nearly dropping it. “ _I can arrange that._ ” He sets it on the counter and scans the counter, guiding his vision by his hand, fingers outstretched and ready to pluck. He finds he was he was looking for. It’s a huge bottle of bright blue stuff, and fills half the cup with it. He then rummages through the fridge and pulls out something that you’re pretty sure is soda and another thing that’s probably juice, though you can’t see the label on either in the time it takes him to fill the rest of your cup with them. You’re still a slow reader, for English words.

He turns around and hands you the cup of stuff, which is now green, still smiling (you’re starting to wonder if he ever stops). You take it and sniff it experimentally. It definitely has the hint of alcohol to it, but mostly it just smells fruity and good. You sip it. It doesn’t taste bad at all, and it definitely doesn’t make you feel like you’re going to throw up.

“ _It’s good,_ ” you tell him, swallowing down a little more.

“ _Awesome!_ ” He pumps his fist in the air. “ _Okay, don’t leave, I’m gonna make something for me._ ”

You wouldn’t dream of leaving. This guy is your new party anchor to replace James. He seems to either be really social naturally, or really social through the artificial means of alcohol, so you get the feeling that being around him will draw attention away from you. On top of that, you just like him. He speaks Japanese to you, and he made you a drink that doesn’t taste nasty. Hopefully it’ll help you loosen up.

XXX

It’s been an hour since you started your drink, and maybe half an hour since you finished it, and you are decidedly loose.

You’re outside again, in the backyard this time, eyeing the volleyball net you hadn’t known was here with something akin to lust, but platonic. You can’t think of the word for that in English or Japanese, since your head feels kind of bobbly and warm, but you’re not even sure there is one.

“ _Do you play volleyball?_ ” Shouyou asks you suddenly. You’re pretty sure he was in the middle of another sentence talking to a girl you think is named Shana. Names have gotten harder now that you’re under the influence, which you suppose is unfortunate. Whatever her name is, she looks thrown off that he suddenly said something not in English.

“ _Yes!_ ” You are so glad he asked. So very glad. You love volleyball. You tell him so, then you repeat it in English so Shana(?) can understand too. She doesn’t look like she understands, but she smiles and nods anyway. You vacantly remember that’s probably because she didn’t know what Shouyou’s initial inquiry was.

Shouyou suddenly leaps what seems like at least _60 centimeters_ into the air. “ _I_ love volleyball!” he shouts in English.

You never would have thought someone as short as him would be into volleyball, but with a jump like that, you can see it now.

“I’m a…” You struggle with your alcohol-addled mind to remember the word for ‘setter’ in English. You fail horribly and make a motion like you’re tossing to him.

“Setter!” he supplies enthusiastically. “Holy shit, you’re a setter!? That’s awesome! Tobio, we should play.”

“ _Right now?_ ” You’re slipping in and out of your native tongue, which is probably weird. Shana(?) looks impressed, maybe. She’s still smiling. You decide you like Shana.

“Yeah! I bet I can round up…” He trails off for a moment and starts counting on his fingers. A college student is counting on his fingers, right in front of you. “Ten more people.”

“I’ll play!” Shana(?) says, apparently as amused by Shouyou as you are. “I mean, I’m not a pro, but I can, like, hit it.”

Hinata grabs her by the shoulders, looking up at her eyes (she’s taller than him, like most of the people at this party; Americans are tall; you seem to be a fairly average height here). “Shana, go find Demetri and Lucas and Ariel and ask them if they want to play. And maybe Harry. Do you know Harry?”

“Yeah, the tall guy with the blue hair, right?”

“That’s him. I’ll cover Marcus and everyone else. Meet back here in ten minutes. _Come on, Kageyama_.” He’s suddenly yanking you in another direction.

XXX

Fifteen minutes later, you can hardly believe it, but you’re standing on the grass in front of a volleyball net. You have lost your shoes. Not really lost, but discarded, because Shouyou convinced you that it’s better to play volleyball on grass without shoes on. He is also barefoot.

For some reason, some other people have noticed you’re setting up a game, and somehow a table has appeared, and it’s filling up with more Solo cups, into which people are pouring cheap beer.

Shouyou is talking to some people on the other team, really fast, in English, and you can’t catch all of it. You’re pretty sure the idea is for you to drink the beer, but you don’t know on what terms.

He comes over and explains it to you. “ _Okay, we’re playing so that you have a buddy, and every time you or your buddy misses a receive or fails to block a spike or something, you both have to drink. Basically every time you lose a point. Your buddy is Aaron._ ” He turns around. “Hey, Aaron, wave!” A tall, dark haired boy with glasses waves at you. “ _Got it?_ ”

“ _Why are we drinking more?_ ” You already feel weird and floaty, and you’re not even sure how well you’ll be able to play volleyball.

“ _Because it’s a party, and it’s fun! You can ask for water if you want. These guys are all really chill, they won’t make you drink if you don’t want to._ _But I think Aaron’s pretty good, so you probably won’t have to much._ ”

“ _Then I’ll drink it._ ” Since you had that green thing he made you, you’ve been feeling pretty alright. You’re not so worried about being around a bunch of people you don’t know, and Shouyou ends up doing most of the talking in whatever group you’ve been in anyway. People are laughing at the things you say, so either you’ve always been funny and no one has ever noticed, or alcohol makes you funnier. You think you like alcohol.

He grins again, a sight you’re starting to find pretty comforting, and turns to gather up the rest of the people on your team. “Alright, guys, when we get the ball, try to hit it to this guy, and he’ll get us the points.” As he says this, he’s clapping you on the back, and you realize he means you. He doesn’t even know how good you are and he’s saying that? Well, you are good, but it’s not like he’s ever seen you play.

You’re also not sure how good you’ll be now that you are more than a little intoxicated.

The team seems to agree with this anyway, all in varying stages of drunkenness.

“Everyone know who their buddy is?” Shouyou shouts as you all start to take your positons.

Aaron points at you, which freaks you out at first, but then he gives you a thumbs up, which you like. You give a thumbs up back. You have a thought that thumbs are weird, and you kind of want to tell someone, but then the moment passes.

Someone on the other side serves. A blonde girl hops to the side and receives it pretty well, sending it up. Marcus hits it up again, and then it’s coming to you. Okay, you can totally do this. You can set this ball while drunk.

Your fingertips press against the synthetic material of the ball, giving it just enough push to arc over to Shouyou. You can’t tell if it went where you wanted it to go, because you might have forgotten to aim and just acted on reflex, but he jumps anyway.

Even drunk as he is, or maybe because you’re as drunk as you are, he looks graceful the way he leaps up off the ground. You watch him and it’s like his movements are slowed down just for your eyes; the flex of his calves, the tilt of his feet once they’re in the air, the arc his arm makes as he snaps it forward to smack the ball down onto the grass on the other side.

And then everything’s back to normal. Someone from your team is patting Shouyou on the back, and the guy with the blue hair who jumped up tried to save his spike and the girl in the gray sweater from your team step off to the side to grab a cup from the table.

“ _That was a great toss!_ ” Shouyou shouts at you. “ _It went right into my hand!_ ”

You blink at him. “ _Volleyball is harder with alcohol._ ”

“ _It’s only going to get harder_ ,” he replies, beaming at you.

You go three more points (awarded to them, you, and you, respectively) before Aaron twists for the ball and accidentally falls over onto the grass and you have you are handed your first beer. There isn’t even that much in it—just a couple centimeters (how do you even measure alcohol? Centimeters doesn’t seem right). And it doesn’t taste that bad, but not that good either. At least, it doesn’t taste like alcohol. Just bad soda. You gulp it down in two gulps and return to the court.

Shouyou’s partner is probably the worst person on her team, or maybe just the drunkest, and by the time your team is at 13 points, she and Shouyou have had to drink for about half of them. Part of the reason for this is that she’s trying to save all the spikes he hits. As far as everyone else goes for missing points, it’s about even. At the end of the first set, which you guys win likely due to your skilled (although, less so than usual) setting and Shouyou’s spiking, you and Aaron have each had three cups of beer, and Shouyou is swaying a bit and shouting more than a bit. At least he seems like he’s having fun.

Everyone on your team is high-fiving everyone else right now, though, and you are being passed another beer, and some guy is shouting ‘Winners drink!’ so you do.

In the second set, tossing to Shouyou doesn’t work quite as well. A few times he flat-out misses the ball, and other times he jumps sideways and collides with it. Which only leads to him drinking more. You’re starting to get a little worried. He’s slurring as he asks you to send him another, and you’re starting to feel a little less sharp yourself.

The guy with blue hair who’s name you definitely heard Shouyou say but can’t remember now is serving. He’s gotten maybe one or two beers more than you, but he looked like he had quite a bit more to drink than you beforehand, and the ball scrapes the edge of the net before tipping over.

Shouyou dives for it, fast, but not fast enough. And then he’s scrambling up suddenly, running into the house.

A bunch of people who were watching are ‘ooh’ing, and the people playing mostly just look confused, but you’re worried. You run into the house after him.

You don’t find him in the bathroom. You knock and call his name, but someone who isn’t him calls back that it’s occupied.  So you search the rest of the house, ignoring the people who try to stop you and talk to you, one of whom you think is James (a very drunk James), but you don’t care about him right now.

You’ve decided in the hour and a half that you’ve known Shouyou that you really like him. He’s been nice to you ever since you met him, whereas most people are scared off by your sour-looking expression and your quietness. But his smiles are infectious, or they would be if you knew how to smile without looking scary, and it’s fun to hear him talk about random things, even if it’s not always in Japanese. He’s good at volleyball, too. You’re not ready for him to die of alcohol poisoning before you can become friends with him.

In the end, he finds you. You feel someone grab your hand, and when you turn, it’s him. He tugs you across the hall and into a dark room, closes the door behind you, locks it, and apparently stumbles over things on the floor before a small lamp flicks on in the corner of the room. You’re in someone’s bedroom, presumably Marcus’s. There are clothes all over the floor, which must be why it sounded like Shouyou was tripping.

He takes a couple long gulps from a Solo cup you hadn’t realized he had brought with him.

“ _Are you sure you should be—_ ”

“It’s water.” He grins, looking tired. “ _Don’t worry, I feel better now that it’s…out of my system. I made it to the trash, at least. Bathroom was occupied._ ” He flops face-down on Marcus’s unmade bed. After a minute or so of you standing awkwardly by the door, he rolls over, looking tired.

“ _Come lie down with me._ ”

You suddenly realize you are very tired, and lying down sounds good. You make your way carefully over to the bed and suddenly remember your shoes are outside somewhere. You hope you’ll be able to find them when you have to leave, but somehow you feel like even if you can’t, it will be okay.

However, you’re feeling a little angry. “ _Oi, are you some kind of dumbass?_ ”

“ _Huh? Why the hell are you asking me that all of a sudden?_ ”

“ _Why would you drink that much if you couldn’t handle it?_ ”

“ _I could have handled it if I wasn’t jumping around so much. You wouldn’t know ‘cuz you’re tall. You’re the dumbass._ ” He swats at your arm.

He goes quiet for a while, and you think he might have fallen asleep, and you feel like you’re about to, but suddenly he’s up on his side, peering down over you. “ _Hey, Tobio, what do you think of me?_ ”

The question catches you off-guard. “ _What?_ ”

“ _Just answer, don’t think about it!_ ”

You can’t help thinking about it. Honestly, you think he’s funny and interesting and cool, even if he’s also kind of a dork and his hair is crazy. But mostly, you think he’s cute. Really cute. Dangerously cute. Make-your-heart-beat-a-little-fast-with-his-face-a-little-too-close-to-yours cute. “ _You’re weird,_ ” you say instead of anything nice or true. What is wrong with you?

His smile fades for the first time since you’ve met him. He sinks back down onto the bed. “Huh. _Guess I read you wrong._ ”

“ _What do you mean?_ ”

“I thought you liked me.” There’s some kind of tone to his voice that you don’t know what to make of. Not to mention, he threw you off with the sudden English.

“ _Say it in Japanese,_ ” you demand.

“You know what that means, stupid. I’m not gonna baby you if you don’t even like me.”

Your heart thuds again. Without really thinking about it, you sit up and put your other arm on the other side of him. You’re hovering over him now, and you’re pretty sure that’s weird, but you’re still pretty drunk, and you’re warm, and he’s the cutest, most familiar thing you’ve run into since leaving Japan. Maybe even in the time you were in Japan. Have you ever had this kind of connection with someone before? “ _I do like you_.” It sounds even more embarrassing out loud.

He’s staring up at you, and he doesn’t look weirded out by your position over him. He’s got a serious expression on for once, no hint of a smile, his eyes coffee-dark. “ _Prove it_.”

What is he asking you to do? You feel like you know, somewhere deep inside you, but you can’t be sure, and it scares you.

You’ve had something to drink, though, and that makes you brave.

You lean down slowly, covering the centimeters just a little at a time so you have time to back out, or he has time to punch you, or something else happens to keep you from kissing this boy you barely know. But no such thing happens. You kiss him.

When he still doesn’t push you away, you let your eyes drift close, and press down harder against his mouth. His hand go from the bed to the back of your shirt, fingers tightening in your jacket. He moves against your mouth and slots his lips with yours, tugging at your bottom lip with his teeth. You part your lips a little and his tongue immediately slips in.

It’s so nice. Kissing him is so nice. His lips and tongue are warm and soft and wet, and the way your jacket is pulling across your shoulders by Shouyou’s hands is oddly exhilarating. He moans into your mouth and nips at his tongue, and you give a soft hum of your own, feeling some sensations in parts of your body other than your mouth after a bit.

You shift your hips uncomfortably as you start to grow hard. This position isn’t the best for kissing anyway, because your arms are starting to get a little bit sore, and you’re a little dizzy anyway from all that you drank. So when Shouyou starts moving away, you’re disappointed because you have to stop kissing him, but glad that you can relax into a less painful position.

He seems to be full of energy now, the way he pushes you down onto the bed and swings his leg over yours. You notice he’s definitely having the same kind of reaction in his lower body that you are, and when he grinds hard down on you, you both groan. He looks a little unsteady sitting upright over you like that, so you reach up and pull him back down. When he’s kissing you again, you move your hands to his hips and pull him against you.

You kiss him a little hungrily, eager to bite back at him when he uses his teeth on your lips or your tongue, ducking down to mouth along his throat. He eventually gives you both more friction by unfolding his knees from the bed and laying on top of you to grind against you that way, but he’s pretty light, so you don’t mind. The pressure he does give you is pleasant; you like being pressed up against his small, warm, tight body.

The steady circles you were making with your hips are growing less and less steady the longer you do it. He shifts a little so his leg slips between yours and he pushes his thigh up hard against your crotch and this is even better. You groan into his mouth and squeeze his ass, thrusting up against him as roughly as he is down against you.

He gasps your name into your mouth as he comes, and makes a little squeaky noise before collapsing to the side of you, the side of his face resting against your shoulder. But somehow he still has some stamina left, because he undoes the button on your jeans and yanks your fly down before plunging his hand into your pants and grabbing your dick. You grab the front of his shirt at the sudden feeling of his warm hand.

He gives you the exact kind of quick, firm strokes you need, and you lean your cheek against his hair and close your eyes, rolling your hips up against his hand and gripping the front of his shirt as he jerks you off. “ _You have a nice cock_ ,” he whispers into your ear, nibbling at the lobe. You were close enough before, but hearing him say that makes you gasp and come too. He doesn’t stop until he feels you start to go limp, but then he withdraws his hand and flings it over the side of the side of the bed.

You lie there, basking in both the afterglow and the fuzzy effects of the alcohol, and all you can really think now is that you’re tired. Tired and happy. After a few minutes, you lazily straighten out your pants and fasten them back up. The tiny, sober part of your brain is telling you that you can’t fall asleep in a near-stranger’s house, locked in his room, in his bed with some random guy you just got off with. But the tired part of your brain is much louder than that.

You turn on your side and nestle your face in his hair, breathing in the scent of his shampoo, which is something like strawberries. You think it suits him, and it suits his hair.

Eventually, Shouyou turns on his side too, with his back pressed to you, and gropes for your arm to pull it around his stomach. The world is spinning behind your closed eyes, and you think under different circumstances, you would be concerned by this, but your chest is light and floaty, and the rest of your body doesn’t even seem to exist, so you think your head will come around eventually.

You fall asleep after a couple of minutes, and you have a dream about flying.

XXX

When you wake up, you are on the floor of Marcus’s living room, and you don’t remember how you got there. Light is pouring in from the windows, and to say your head hurts would be an understatement. You sit up slowly and look around. There are Solo cups everywhere, a bowl of chips upturned on the floor, a shoe to the left of where your head was, and the furniture all looks slightly askew.

The next step is to stand, and you consider it a success that it only takes one try. You find the bathroom and have one of the most satisfying urinations of your life, probably, wash your hands, and wander around looking for other signs of human life.

You find a girl you don’t know curled up on the dining room table, asleep. You do not disturb her. Through the kitchen window, you see a couple of people sitting outside. You wander out there. James, Marcus, two of Marcus’s roommates, and Shouyou are sitting in Marcus’s lawn chairs. Shouyou is nursing a mug of what you presume is probably coffee, and looks worse than you feel, but he still manages to smile weakly when you come out.

You wander over and sit in one of the empty lawn chairs.

“This your first hangover, man?” Marcus asks.

You nod wearily, prepared to be mostly mute again, and he laughs.

“We’re going to Denny’s in a bit. That’ll help. Denny’s is the best cure for a hangover.”

“I’m going to eat fifteen pancakes,” Shouyou tells you. He brightens up a little at the prospect.

You’ve only had pancakes a handful of times, but right now they sound really good. You feel like you could probably eat about fifteen too.

It turns out they were taking bets on who would wake up first. There are two other people here besides everyone who’s outside—Theresa, who was the one you saw on the table, and Annabelle, Marcus’s girlfriend, who is upstairs. James won the bet, so as it stands, Shouyou, Marcus, and Marcus’s roommates (Eric and Gavin, you learn) are splitting the cost of his breakfast. They invite you to guess which of the girls will be the next to wake up, but you insist that you have absolutely no idea, which launches them into a conversation of trying to remember how much each of them had to drink last night.

They don’t reach a conclusion on whether or not Theresa was taking shots with Nicki and Jordan by the time Annabelle wanders out, so it looks like James is the only one getting a free breakfast.

None of the guys (including you) wants to be the one to wake Theresa up, so you leave it to Annabelle, who smacks her on the ass and yells ‘Denny’s’ really loudly, which only aggravates your headache.

It takes another ten minutes before Theresa is awake enough to squeeze into the backseat of Marcus’s car along with you, Shouyou, and Annabelle, during which time you and Shouyou hunt for and successfully find your shoes (his were still outside; yours had somehow gotten into the living room). Eric and Gavin take Gavin’s two-seater convertible. James gets the front because he is the tallest, although he only beats you by a couple of centimeters. Still, you don’t really mind being squashed against Shouyou. He’s just as warm now as he was last night, and as soon as you think that you blush furiously, but no one notices.

He sits next to you in the restaurant and discretely sneaks his hand into yours under the table, and you think Annabelle might have noticed, because she gives Shouyou a coy grin. He either doesn’t notice or pretends not to, and just presses his nose to the menu complaining he doesn’t know what he wants to get, everything looks good.

You all order way too much food and eat most of it anyway, and you can tell it’s not good at all, but it sits well in your far too-empty stomach, seeming to absorb the traces of your sickness with its buttery, sugariness until your headache is mostly gone. Usually you find American food a little heavy, but it seems to be a good cure for hangovers.

Marcus offers to drop you all off at your respective dorms. Before you and James get out, Shouyou demands your phone so he can put his number in it, but finding that it’s dead, and his is as well, he demands a pen. After a few minutes of searching through the junk on the floor, James finds one. Shouyou grabs your arm and shoves the sleeve on your jacket up, scrawling his number over your entire forearm in barely-legible numbers. He makes you write your number on his arm too, though you write it much smaller and only a little neater. He tells you that you have to text him the second you get to a charger, and you promise you will before getting out of the car.

When you get back to your dorm, you plug your phone in and anxiously wait for it to power on before typing out five messages to him, eventually deciding on a simple ‘Hey, it’s Kageyama Tobio.’ When you take a shower, you do your best not to scrub off the pen.

When you get out of the shower, you have a reply that demands both a date and that you get together now that you’re sober and toss to him. He also wants you to come to his house and let his mom cook for you, since he says you probably haven’t had good Japanese food in a while.

You can’t help but agree to all of these things, and it’s hard to say which you’re the most excited about.


End file.
